Dead Wrong
by sapphire-child
Summary: In his vision, Desmond saw Claire getting onto a helicopter with Aaron. What he didn’t see was what happened next...


**Title:** Dead Wrong  
**Warnings:** adult themes, character death  
**Genre:** angst, tragedy  
**Spoilers:** up to the end of season three and predictions for season four  
**Original Post Date: **11/06/2007  
**Summary: **_Even the very wise cannot see all ends._ In his vision, Desmond saw Claire getting onto a helicopter with Aaron but he never saw where it landed…  
**Disclaimer:** In my version of the story Charlie, Claire and Aaron get the happy ending they deserve (albeit not in this fic but whatever). Screw you writers of Lost for killing my OTP! I blow raspberries at you!

* * *

It was as Desmond stood knee deep in the ocean with the tattered remains of a woman draped across his arms, that he took a moment to ask himself when exactly everything had gone so horribly wrong.

When the helicopter had come he'd almost had to throw Claire inside. Somewhere between her storms of tears and the ineffectual blows she had rained upon his chest, Desmond had managed to find a grip at the tops of her shoulders and then he had shaken her, as though trying to shake some sort of understanding into her.

"Don't you _understand_?" his voice cracked alarmingly when he spoke, his throat rough from the oceans salt and the grief that was still plaguing him. "This is what's meant to happen! Charlie died so that you and Aaron could have a new life! So that you could go home! So that you could both be _saved_!"

"And I wish he hadn't done it!" Claire hiccuped with violent sobs between her words and Aaron bawled uncontrollably in her arms. She was somewhere halfway between angry and inconsolable and they were wasting time, standing here shouting at each other. Desmond felt the seconds slip past, sand through the hourglass, and he began to panic. If anyone else from the camp came – and they were bound to be here soon – the end of his vision would change and all would be lost. "I would rather we had lived here together in this place and died together than _this_!"

"Well I'm not gonna let his sacrifice be for nothing!" Desmond had stormed, and he had pushed Claire into the helicopter with such force that she practically fell into the arms of the co-pilot. She screamed then – loud enough that he could hear her even over the top of the noise of the propellers – and struggled to get out of the helicopter, back onto the beach.

He should have known then, even as he ran back far enough to allow them to take off, sand blasting into his eyes and blinding him, that there was something amiss within the scene. Later he would remember, in excruciating detail, everything that was wrong – the serial number on the tail of the helicopter, a blonde co-pilot instead of a brunette, Claire fighting tooth and nail to stay when in his vision she had climbed aboard quite calmly although her face was shining with tears…

Less than two days later, various pieces of shrapnel began to wash up on shore.At first Desmond put it down to coincidence but now however…he couldn't deny the truth any longer. Claire was dead – her body limp and bloated in his arms, nothing more than a fetid, rotting corpse. Her beautiful eyes had been pecked out by scavenging birds, her hair was tangled with seaweed and bleached ghostly white from the salt and sun.

He buried her alone, away from all the other graves. He didn't want anyone to know what had happened to her - what he had done to her. For all they knew, she had flown away on that helicopter and was halfway home by now and he wanted it to stay that way. Nobody deserved to share the guilt he was now burdened with.

He sobbed at the foot of her freshly covered grave – still and quiet in the hour before dawn. He, Desmond Hume, had been the cause of the deaths of three beautiful young people – one of them still just a bairn – that he could have avoided if he'd only just _believed_ that they would pull through.

And now, because of his lack of faith, he had destroyed the final vestiges of everyone's hope – not just his own.

If only he hadn't convinced Charlie that he had to die then the helicopter wouldn't have come, Claire wouldn't have gotten onto it, she and Aaron wouldn't have died...

There might have still been a chance for Desmond to save himself.

When the real helicopter comes – the one he saw in his vision, Desmond runs to tell the crash survivors and then stands back and watches them squabble over it like seagulls on the shorefront. In the end, the helicopter refuses to take anyone and nobody is saved. The survivors gape as they watch their rescue vanish into the blurred line between ocean and horizon. Once it has disappeared completely, Hurley turns to Desmond, eyes smouldering and fists clenched.

"You _knew_." He hisses through his teeth – angrier than anyone has ever seen him before. "You _knew_ that there was going to be two helicopters!"

"I didn't know there was going to be two helicopters brother," Desmond said bleakly, his head bowed. "I made a mistake."

When Hurley rushed at him, he didn't even bother to fight back. It felt good to have someone's fist in his gut, the other smashing against the fragile bones of his face and bruising his skin. The physical pain seemed a just reward for sitting by and just letting three innocent people die.

_Even the very wise cannot see all ends._


End file.
